The Binge Writer

Madeline Miller can write for 14 hours a day and still maintains she does not deserve to be called a writer.

Soft-spoken, polite and without a hint of self-importance, Madeline Miller seems every bit the satisfied scholar she is. Happily, her two degrees in classics do not weigh down the light, lucid prose of her debut novel, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012 and went on to become a bestseller. A retelling of The Iliad as a love story in 368 pages, The Song of Achilles is not laboured by the decade of research and writing that went into it, nor by the intricacy of the mythology on which it is based. It began with Miller’s love of a story. That it turned her into a writer was almost an accident—one she’s still getting used to.

Q How did you begin writing this book, and what was the process like?

A Long, is the short answer. I was a student of the classics—it’s what my degree is in—and I was also a writer, but I never thought of putting the two together. What changed was that I directed a play—a production of Troilus and Cressida, which is Shakespeare’s Iliad play—and it was a total intellectual revelation. What I realised is that all this time that I’d been studying classics, I’d been reading the stories in a passive way, and that I really wanted to participate in them in an active way—I wanted to take part in the telling. After that, I sat down and started writing the novel. Then, it basically took me ten years to finish it. That was not part of the plan, but that’s just how long it took.

Q What was the genesis of the idea of rewriting The Iliad? Did you set out to do that?

A The idea I was obsessed with was the story of Achilles and his beloved Patroclus. Part of what really moved me about their story was the fact that it was a little bit mysterious. In The Iliad, Patroclus is killed, and Achilles is so grief stricken—he’s just devastated—in a way that is really unlike anything in the rest of The Iliad. But Patroclus is a very minor character, and you don’t see very much about their relationship or who he is. The story started with that as the end point—if that’s the end, what’s the beginning? I wanted to show how this relationship develops, and who this man Patroclus is, that when he dies, Achilles’ whole life is basically over.

Q Is it made explicit in the original Iliad that Achilles and Patroclus are lovers?

A The Iliad doesn’t say yes or no—it doesn’t say that they’re lovers, it doesn’t say that they aren’t. This has actually been a point of argument about the text even in the ancient world. One of the arguments about it is: Homer doesn’t say that they’re lovers, therefore they’re not. And some people say, well, Homer doesn’t say that they’re lovers because it’s so obvious to everyone that they are. But when you look at other ancient Greek authors that came after Homer, like Plato and Aeschylus, they interpreted them as lovers. I was following that line of interpretation. I didn’t feel like I was adding something that wasn’t in the ancient world.

Q Have you been criticised for interpreting it that way? Was there any backlash for ‘reinterpreting’ mythology?

A People warned me that I might get a negative reaction to the book, and there have been a few. But it’s actually been a very small number, which makes me really happy, because I believe strongly in gay rights. It’s been very exciting to see that people aren’t reacting negatively; it hopefully means that the world is changing.

Q What was it like to win the Orange Prize?

A It was an incredible honour, just a huge, overwhelming honour. They have a shortlist, and all the authors on it gather in London for a party, where they announce the winner. I went to this party, so excited to be there, to meet the other authors on the list, who are incredible writers and really brilliant women—I was honoured to even be one of them. And then they said that I had won, and it was an incredible moment for me. A wave of shock and excitement went through my body. I truly didn’t expect it. I was beyond thrilled.

Q Who else was on the shortlist?

A Ann Patchett, for State of Wonder, which I loved. She blurbed The Song of Achilles and was so incredibly generous to me on the book. The day that they announced the shortlist, I was at her bookstore giving a reading. She was there and I was there and everyone was very excited. People brought all this orange stuff. I had said to her, “I can’t wait to see you at the party,” and she said, “Actually I can’t be there, but I have the most wonderful orange dress. Why don’t I give it to you, and you can wear it.” So she sent it to me and it fit—we are apparently exactly the same size. When they announced the shortlist, I told her, “I hope you win.” She knows I love her writing.

There was also Esi Edugyan for Half-Blood Blues, Georgina Harding for Painter of Silence… a brilliant book, Anne Enright for The Forgotten Waltz, and Cynthia Ozick for Foreign Bodies. These are really experienced, brilliant women, and as I said, I was excited to be in their company.

Q Did you see yourself as a writer before you wrote this book?

A I did, but I would never have said that. I would have said “I write”, but I wouldn’t have said “I am a writer”, because I didn’t feel like I deserved to claim that title. And even now it’s hard when people ask, “What do you do?”, I tend to say “I’m a teacher”, which I am, but it’s still hard to say “I’m a writer”.

Q What is hard about that label?

A I think it’s the fact that I have admired writers for so long. I grew up reading, walking down the street, holding a book in front of my face. My heroes are writers, and books are one of my deepest loves in life. So it almost feels like I don’t deserve it yet. Maybe when I write my second book… I feel like, at this point, I should probably say “I’m a writer”, but I’m just getting used to it.

Q Are you writing a second book?

A I am. I don’t think I’m going to stay in Homer’s world forever, but just for one more book. I’m really interested in adapting The Odyssey. I loved the character of Odysseus. He was one of the most fun characters to write in my book, so I’d like to finish his story. He’s just a minor character in The Song of Achilles, but I’d like to give him his own book. And the female characters in The Odyssey are incredibly strong, so I’m looking forward to their perspective as well.

Q You were writing The Song of Achilles while you were teaching…

A I started it while I was doing my Master’s. After my Master’s, I went on to start teaching. I teach teenagers. I teach high school Latin, ancient history, Greek if I can, and Shakespeare. The three things I do are: teach classics, direct Shakespeare plays, and write. I think it took me ten years partially because I was working on these other things that I was very passionate about.

For me, writing and teaching are actually the same part of my brain. If I’m being fully present for the characters in my story, then I can’t be fully present for my students, and I always want to be present for my students. So I couldn’t come home after a day of work and start writing. I really needed to write on weekends or holidays, and during the summers. But I think that was very helpful to my writing process. It’s easy, when you’re writing, to write something and in the moment it feels good… you think it’s good. But if you have to take a week off in between, it really shows you the problems. It gives you more perspective on the piece. I still work that way, even though I have more time to write now. I tend to give stuff time to rest, and come back to it with fresh eyes.

Q There were a couple of discussions at the Jaipur Literature Festival about whether writing goes hand in hand with literary criticism or scholarship or teaching. Do you feel there is a conflict of interest?

A I feel like there’s a wonderful tension. I think that working with students and seeing them come to these texts for the first time is incredibly exciting. It keeps them fresh, and it feeds my enthusiasm. I do feel like my students are also an inspiration to my work, not directly, but indirectly. And though I can’t think about my work when I’m teaching, I also feel like I’m gathering energy for it.

Scholarship and research, again, feed the creative impulse. One of my favourite things to do if I’m stuck in my writing is to go to the library and take out 50 books and sit there and read through all the scholarship—primary sources, secondary sources, everything I can find—and usually something in there will shake something loose creatively. So I think there’s a very powerful connection between scholarship, research and creativity—one really feeds the other for me.

Q Could you speak about the research aspect of writing this book?

A I hadn’t planned to write a novel, but the idea of Achilles and Patroclus’ story was something I was incredibly excited about from a scholarship perspective as well. I had planned, at some point, to write my thesis on Achilles, so I had done all this research about the subject. I ended up writing my thesis about something else, but it was very exciting that when it came to writing the novel, I had done all the research already, not even thinking it would go into a novel. But I believe in researching—not only before the process, but throughout the process of writing. I need a foundation, I need a passionate response to the work, and I also need to be checking back in with the research as I’m going through.

Q To what extent did interpretations of The Iliad influence the shape or narrative of your book?

A [In] some, but as an author, I don’t necessarily know all the ways that they crept into the work. You read a hundred things, and two of them make it into the book. There’s a huge condensing process that happens. You never know what makes it in. So it’s hard to know, but little things certainly crept in.

Q Do you have rituals or habits that are conducive to your writing?

A I tend to be a binge writer. I think this is a remnant of how I wrote the first book. It would get to be summertime and I wasn’t teaching anymore, so I would just be writing 14 hours a day, every day, non-stop, and then school would start again and I’d put it aside. I still kind of write like that.

Often, when I’m about to start writing, I read a poem. There’s something about reading poetry that focuses my mind and makes me really aware of language and how I’m using it. So that’s always a good jumpstart.

For me, it’s very important that at some point in the process I invite a reader in. I’m very fortunate that my reader is my husband. He’s a writer too, and a great editor. I’m always really appreciative of his feedback.

Q Who do you like to read?

A Many, many authors and many, many types of books. I don’t like to be limited to just traditional literary fiction. I like to read all kinds of genres—non-fiction, graphic novels, anything and everything. I’ve always loved to read, from stuff that people consider junk to what’s considered high literature. I love storytelling. And of course, I always like to go back to the ancient authors, like Virgil and Homer—they’re incredible inspirations for me. But I love modern authors just as much. I’ve been raving everywhere about Hilary Mantel. She’s my new favourite author. I love David Mitchell. He’s such a gifted writer, I’d read anything he wrote. I’d read his grocery list. I just read Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, which I thought was an incredibly powerful book.

Q Are there any writers who influence your style of writing, or any you aspire to write like?

A One of the writers who influenced me very early on—I read her in high school and it changed my life—is the American author Lorrie Moore. She’s so gifted, and razor sharp. I remember reading her book and thinking, ‘Wow, if I could write like that… ’ It’s funny to read a book now, as a writer, and be thinking about my own writing. I notice, ‘Oh that’s the way they handled that’ or ‘What a beautiful sentence that was’. It changes the way I read a little bit, because I’m very aware of what they’re doing. But I also read pretty constantly, so it’s hard to know what goes in. I’m sure it’s all mixing in.

fictionMadeline MillerOrange Prize